Out of the Blue

by Val Rutt

  ‘Help me back to my chair.’

  June gets up and takes her father’s arm and he rises shakily. He thrusts the stick in front of him and leans on it as he swings his leg forward from the hip. Back in the sunroom June helps him into his chair.

  The letter shakes violently in Bert’s hand as he holds it out towards June. It looks as though he is admonishing her with it.

  ‘What is the matter, Dad?’ June asks again and there is an edge to her voice, concern perhaps or irritation, it is not clear which. She waits, she has no choice, while Bert’s rasping breath slowly quietens. At last he says, ‘I’ve done a terrible thing, June.’

  ‘Oh now, I’m sure you haven’t, Dad.’ June sits beside him and reaches for the letter, but Bert pulls it to him.

  ‘I have, June, I’ve done a terrible thing. You have to help me.’ He shakes his head then looks down at the letter. ‘It was for Kitty, you see – he asked me to give it to her. He loved her, June, he loved her. And she loved him, I know that now. She loved him – I saw it, saw it in her face just now. It broke her heart.’

  ‘What, Dad? What is it that you’re saying? Who are you talking about?’

  ‘It was a mistake – I see that now. I’ve done a terrible thing.’

  June 1944

  Aunt Vi held the Picture Post towards the lamplight and peered through her spectacles.

  ‘They wrote all about it last month – course I didn’t pay too much attention to it then. But, now that our boys are back in France, it helps to know what they’re going through. Like moving the city of Birmingham, that’s what it says, imagine that.’

  ‘Read it out, Auntie,’ Kitty asked, not because she wanted to hear it, but because she would be able to daydream and watch the clock uninterrupted while her aunt was occupied. Aunt Vi shook the magazine free of its crease and settled back in her chair.

  ‘Let me see . . . oh yes, listen to this. “Something comparable to the City of Birmingham hasn’t merely got to be shifted: it’s got to be kept moving when it’s on the other side . . . there will be no food to eat, no water to drink, no roads or railways to travel on . . .” Good heavens, Kitty, imagine – all that going on in that awful weather? Those poor men. There weren’t even any harbours – they took them over with them. Can you believe it, Kitty?’

  Aunt Vi sighed and fell quiet. It was a few minutes before ten o’clock and twilight was falling. Kitty stood up and went to the window. The sky was dark blue and the wind threw a fine spray of rain against the glass.

  ‘I’m going to put my coat on and go out for a little while.’

  ‘At this time of night? And it’s raining Kitty!’

  ‘I’ll not be long and it’s hardly rain, more like drops of moisture in the air.’

  Aunt Vi smiled and shook her head, shooing her away with a flap of the Picture Post. She guessed where Kitty was going and who she was going to meet.

  Kitty put a scarf over her hair and tied it beneath her chin. She put her gabardine over her shoulders and stepped out into the garden and ran the few yards to the gate. As she stepped out on to the road, Sammy turned the corner and she ran to meet him. Sammy placed his hands on either side of her face and grinned at her before pulling her towards him and kissing her.

  ‘Every time I leave you I think that you can’t really be so wonderful, and here you are, just look at you.’ Sammy kissed her again. Then, placing his arm across her shoulders, they walked together up the lane away from the village.

  ‘Dora came round today. She was fed up because her sister Gwendolyn sent word to say that she couldn’t get home and didn’t know when she next would. It’s Dora’s birthday at the weekend and she was hoping Gwen would be here for it.’ Kitty talked on about Charlie and Aunt Vi and the letter that she had had from her mother, until she sensed something was not right and stopped mid-flow.

  ‘You’re quiet,’ she said, finally slowing her pace. Sammy lifted a curled hand and gently brushed his knuckles against Kitty’s cheek. Kitty walked on slowly, suddenly finding it difficult to lift her feet.

  ‘Are you going away?’ Her voice came in a small, frightened whisper.

  ‘I’m not going to be able to see you for a while, kitten. I have a couple of days’ leave and then I’ll be gone.’

  Kitty felt her stomach turn. A few minutes ago, waiting to meet him, she had felt giddy with happiness. Now, she felt sick with fear that she might never see him again. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She began to shake her head and covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Kitty? Kitty, please, listen to me . . .’ His voice was gentle, apologetic. ‘I don’t want to leave you. It’s hard enough saying goodnight to you.’ He tried to pull her hands from her face, but she dipped her head and wouldn’t look at him. He wrapped his arms around her and bent his head over hers. When he spoke his mouth was close to her ear.

  ‘I don’t have any right to ask you this. We only just met and, if the world wasn’t so crazy and mixed up, then we’d be going for walks and picnics. I want to take you dancing – just a normal couple having fun. But everything is mixed up and crazy, Kit – and jeez, if it wasn’t I would never have met you. The thing is Kitty, what I’m trying to say is, I’m so glad that I’ve met you. I’d like you to be my girl – if you want to? If you can wait for me?’

  Kitty lifted her face to his and though she was smiling, she began to cry uncontrollably. Sammy threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘Oh-oh, now we’re done for – Kitty Danby crying in the rain – quick, someone build an ark!’

  He pulled her to him and held her tight.

  ‘I love you, Kitty, and when this war is over I want to be with you all the time, I want to marry you – if you’ll have me?’

  August 2006

  By the time she reaches home, Bert’s words have stirred memories that Kitty has not allowed herself to have before.

  He fell for you Kitty . . . he was over the moon about you.

  The neighbour calls across the fence as Kitty locks her car.

  ‘How are you, Mrs Poll? Hot again – we could do with some rain.’

  Kitty raises a hand and smiles and is thankful that her glasses have darkened in the sun and her tears are not visible. What a silly old fool I am, she thinks as she lets herself in at the front door. After all these years. Kitty drops her keys on the hall stand and goes upstairs to the glass-fronted bookcase on the landing. She slides back the glass and takes out the anthology of Robert Graves. She carries it into her bedroom and sits on her bed. She lets the book fall open in her hands and it still finds that page. It is all she has of Sammy’s now. She destroyed his letters the night she had agreed to marry Roy but she had not felt the need to be secretive about the book.

  The photograph is still inside, tucked between the pages. She lifts it out and stares at it. And this is the girl who became Sammy’s wife, she thinks. This is the girl he went home and married. Kitty reads the poem on the page where Sammy left the photograph all those years ago. It is a poem about hopeless love. About their hopeless love, so she had always thought. There was a war, there was tragedy and death and sadness, and they were young. All her adult life, Kitty has reasoned that their youth and the extreme circumstances of war threw her and Sammy together and that it had been infatuation, not love. She had convinced herself that it would not have lasted the cold light of peacetime and was best forgotten. She believed that he had made a promise to a girl back home and that, with the war over, he had come to his senses and kept his promise. Kitty had, she thought, come to terms with these things many years ago. But now, sixty-two years later, she sits on her bed and is in tune once more with her sixteen-year-old self.

  Suddenly, it is not Roy Poll, her husband of forty years, whom she thinks about, despite their happy marriage. Something long lost to her has been reawakened and it is Sammy Ray Bailey that she misses. She reads the poem and the last line blurs as the tears come again. She closes the book and holds it against her. She rocks gently and allows herself to imagin
e how her life might have been.

  June 1944

  The bus was already crowded when Kitty and Sammy squeezed past the conductor. Packed against the other passengers in the aisle, Sammy held on to an overhead strap with one hand and Kitty with the other, resting his chin on the top of her head. A man Kitty couldn’t see was telling a joke and began laughing loudly as soon as he finished it. A few nearby passengers joined in good-naturedly. A woman beside Kitty was recounting the latest invasion news to the elderly man beside her who nodded as he listened.

  They got off the bus close to Ashford’s market and walked arm in arm towards the town centre. There was a short queue outside the photographic studio, four soldiers in uniform and two women dressed for the occasion, one in a dress coat, the other in a two-piece suit, both with hat and gloves.

  ‘Hey, now here’s an idea,’ Sammy said, stopping behind the women and gently pulling Kitty into line beside him. ‘Let’s get our picture taken.’

  Kitty wasn’t sure.

  ‘My gran told me never to have my photograph taken with a young man . . .’ She stopped and blushed, remembering that what Gran had actually said was that couples photographed together before their marriage would never be wed. ‘She’s a bit superstitious though – silly really.’

  ‘No, sounds like just the thing my grandmother would say. How about we just get our pictures taken separately; then I can take you with me when I go and you can keep me here with you. How’s that sound?’

  ‘I wish you were going to be here with me, Sammy.’

  ‘It won’t be for long, Kitty – I’m sure of it – once we push them out of France, it’ll be over.’

  A young mother, carrying her little boy on her hip, joined the queue behind them. The child was not much more than a baby and he stared shyly at Kitty and hid his face in his mother’s neck when Sammy spoke to him.

  ‘We’re getting our picture taken for Daddy, aren’t we?’ the young mother said, tipping her head to see her small son’s face. ‘Daddy’s gone to France, hasn’t he?’

  ‘I bet your daddy’s proud of you!’ Kitty said as the child lifted his face from his mother’s shoulder. ‘What’s his name?’ she asked the mother.

  ‘William, his dad’s William too – well, Bill.’ Hearing his name, the child turned his head and stared at his mother.

  Ten minutes passed and they moved up to the shop door and, at last, stepped into the studio followed by the young mother and her son. The two women in their Sunday best were waiting in front of them. The air was heavy with the smell of chemicals and furniture polish. A soldier came out through a curtain behind an oak counter, and was followed by a tall thin woman who went with him to the door and spoke to the people who were still waiting on the pavement outside.

  ‘Mr Wilson regrets that he will not be able to photograph everyone waiting today. We’ve been expecting a delivery this afternoon and I’m afraid we’re nearly out. If you could come back tomorrow.’

  The photographer’s assistant stepped back into the shop, turned the sign in the window from Open to Closed, and invited the two women to follow her through the curtain into the studio. The young mother was beginning to look flustered, as she struggled to entertain her child who was now fidgeting and squealing a protest at being held for so long. He arched his back, then made a grab for his mother’s hair and succeeded in pulling the rolled curl at her temple free from its hairgrips. At that moment, the assistant reappeared from the back of the shop.

  ‘Mr Wilson says he is very sorry but he can only do one more now – on account of those ladies wanting separate portraits as well as being done together.’ Her look suggested that, if she had her way, the two women would not be getting one photograph, let alone three.

  Kitty and Sammy glanced at each other and then at the harassed young mother who could not hide her disappointment. Kitty smiled at her.

  ‘Would you like to go next? We were just passing by – I mean, it does seem a pity, now that you’ve got this far with the little one, for you not to go in.’

  The young woman’s face lit up.

  ‘Oh, are you sure? Only Bill’s going to miss his first birthday and I . . . Oh thank you, thanks ever so much.’

  She balanced William on her hip and struggled to open her handbag and take out her comb. Sammy reached out and took the baby from her.

  ‘Hey, big fella, let your ma fix her hair.’

  Sammy held the boy up at arm’s length over his head and Kitty opened her eyes wide and cooed at him.

  ‘Look at you, young William! Look how big you are!’

  William’s mother took a compact from her bag and hurriedly tidied her hair and reapplied her lipstick. Kitty stood close to Sammy as he held the boy, and laughed with him as the child’s fat little fingers scratched at the silver winged badge above Sammy’s chest pocket.

  Sammy squeezed Kitty’s hand as they left the shop. ‘I don’t need your photograph – I can see you whenever I close my eyes.’

  Later they had lunch in the tearooms where they were served steaming-hot bowls of the dish of the day and tried to decide if it was a thin stew or a thick soup. Kitty drank tea, but Sammy ordered coffee and then shuddered as he swallowed each mouthful.

  ‘Wait until you taste my ma’s coffee,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask her to bake us a walnut and maple syrup pie – you’ve got to try that. Ma’s pie with a cup of strong hot coffee – oh boy, that’s the best.’

  ‘I thought you said that snow buns were the best,’ Kitty teased.

  ‘Well, yes that’s correct, they are too.’ Sammy grinned, pleased that she had remembered.

  Kitty smiled at Sammy over the top of her cup. He met her gaze but he was no longer smiling. Kitty slid her hand across the table.

  ‘Come on, Sammy, we’re going to enjoy today, remember? Forget all our worries for just one day.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Sammy replied. ‘I was just thinking, you know, what if we got married straight away – then we could spend all our time together. When I’m flying out of Europe I won’t be able to see you anyway. If we’re married, then you could go to the States. My folks are going to love you, Kitty, and they’ll take good care of you. I don’t know – is it a good idea, what do you think?’

  Kitty thought. Various scenes – the consequences, both delicious and frightening to imagine, of a hasty marriage and sailing to America alone, vied for attention in her mind. She imagined meeting Sammy’s parents, seeing his home and being among the things he cared about and the people he loved. Then she saw herself alone and so far away from him. She imagined saying goodbye to Charlie and the possibility of never seeing him or her mother or Aunt Vi again. She imagined the Atlantic crossing, the steel-grey ship and unfriendly seas.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sammy interrupted her reverie, ‘that wasn’t put in the most romantic way.’

  ‘Oh it’s not that, it was romantic – it’s just that America is so far away. It’s hard to explain but, even though you’ll be in France or Italy and I’m in England, I think I’d still feel as though we were under the same sky. When I get up in the mornings, I’ll think of you and it will be morning for you too, and I think I’ll feel close to you because of that. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? Does that sound silly?’

  ‘No, that’s not silly at all – you know, Kitty, you say something that hasn’t occurred to me before and I know exactly what you mean and I think that you’re right. I guess, it’s just that, when I think of home, it is so safe, there’s plenty to eat. No fighting, no bombs – I want to think of you there, safe and away from this war.’

  ‘We’re not doing very well, are we?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not thinking about the things that worry us.’

  Afterwards they wandered into the park. It no longer had railings, half the grass area was now given over to an air-raid shelter and the flower beds were planted with vegetables. They sat together on a bench and talked. An elderly woman passed with a cocker spaniel on a lea
d. Sammy told Kitty about the farm dogs and the little mongrel that he had found half dead as he walked to school one day. It was a sad story and, as he told it, Kitty leaned towards him and studied his face and imagined the scene: Sammy at ten years old, playing truant from school so that he could care for the injured puppy. She was relieved when he got to the happy ending and suddenly felt overwhelmed by a mixture of love and pride. Sammy returned her gaze for a moment then grinned broadly.

  ‘Actually, you remind me of Skipper when you look at me like that,’ he said and began to laugh.

  ‘Hey!’ Kitty protested and raised her arm as if to slap him, but he caught her hand and pulled it to his lips and kissed her fingers.

  ‘I’m kidding. It nearly drives me crazy when you look at me like that. I love you so much, Kitty.’ He kissed her.

  They were interrupted by a sharp voice.

  ‘Kitty Danby – is that you?’

  They broke away from each other and Kitty jumped to her feet and found herself looking at Mrs Parkes. Sammy stood up slowly and nodded at the older woman.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Parkes. How are you?’ Kitty said and was then horrified to feel herself blushing.

  ‘I am very well, Kitty,’ Mrs Parkes replied coolly. ‘Tell me, does your aunt know that you are in Ashford with this young man?’

  Kitty felt furious and indignant to be asked such an impertinent question. How dare Mrs Parkes imply that she was doing anything improper?

  ‘My aunt knows perfectly well where I am and who I am with.’ Kitty’s voice wavered with anger. She glared at Mrs Parkes defying her to treat her as anything less than the adult she considered herself to be.

  ‘Mrs Parkes, isn’t it?’ Sammy said then, stepping forward and offering his hand. ‘Perhaps you don’t remember me? You must meet so many servicemen at the socials you organise. You’re very highly thought of, you know, ma’am. All the officers at the base sing your praises; why, they say, if it wasn’t for Mrs Parkes, what would we do with ourselves?’